I was personally taught to keep the thumb sticked to the hand, joined to it to avoid any posible damage to the thumb, well keeping the thumb stretched seems (with all due respect to Fairbairn) a good way to get it broken if someone does a hard block or parry and you get hit in the thumb

But the thumb is behind your strike; if your thumb is hitting their block you're doing something weird like a ridgehand.

My take on the edge of hand blow: I think they can work, like in the classic cop chops pimp video, but I'd guess its harder to learn a good chop than a good punch, fear of hand-breaking aside. Regarding his targets:
(a) The sides or back of the wrist: why bother?

(b) The forearm, half-way between the wrist and elbow: you might be able to do this against a punch, but that's hitting a small moving target, and to hit hard enough to do anything you'd basically have to overcommit to a block, so I don't like it.

(c) The biceps: seems like if you can hit the biceps you can hit something better. Plus this one's kinda weird in the context of life or death struggle. I guess if you did a hard bicep strike it might set up an Austin Powers chop to the neck.

(d) The sides or back of the neck: these both work, but an actual fighter won't turn his back to you and raised shoulders (trained or untrained) make the sides of the neck harder to hit. I'll bet a hard shuto to the back of the neck if the person is bent over would have telling effects, but getting them in that position is the hard part, not following up. People don't often stand there bent over and dazed like a pro wrestler or Mortal Kombat character with the birdies.

(e) Just below the "Adam's apple": causes gag reflex and can make breathing difficult, but its a small target to fit a shuto in there unless its pre-emptive. Do pre-emptively like Liam Nieson. This is a pretty awful way to get hit if you're not expecting it.

(f) The kidneys or base of the spine: this one is also intended for a bent-over opponent. I'd say kidneys over spine for more damage, since the spine is actually pretty well protected, while the kidneys aren't.

Note. - If your opponent catches hold of you, strike his wrist or forearm; a fracture will most: If your opponent catches hold of you, you could hit him all sorts of sensitive places, and the wrist is far down that list. I don't think a fracture would likely result.
likely result.

"This would be almost impossible with a blow from a clenched fist.": I don't really get how a closed fist would be impossible to break the wrist but an open hand its "more than likely".

Yeah, that seems like a good way to break your hand, not your opponent's arm/wrist.

I prefer Jack Dempsey's book. Why? Cause it has a few situational techniques, some pretty decent advice about searching a captured person, slightly racist humor, and most importantly, the expectation that one practice boxing, wrestling, and judo to be effective.

Yeah, that seems like a good way to break your hand, not your opponent's arm/wrist.

I prefer Jack Dempsey's book. Why? Cause it has a few situational techniques, some pretty decent advice about searching a captured person, slightly racist humor, and most importantly, the expectation that one practice boxing, wrestling, and judo to be effective.

I laughed when Dempsey explains that anybody can knock a man out because if you dropped a baby from height on someone, it could knock them out.

You guys are talking about Fairbairn without mentioning kneeing and seizing of testicles (look in the bear hug section)? -raises an eyebrow-

Seriously though, bear in mind that this is a manual for training soldiers for World War II, where US and Britain had to train a huge number of people who had never been in a fight in their whole lives to have some kind of combat capability in the shortest amount of time as possible. Therefore the ease of learning/training in the methods trumps the effectiveness of the said techniques (not that the latter is not important). If you look carefully there are techniques in the manual that Fairbairn admits "has only one in two chance of success" or even "one in ten chance of success". This is a manual designed to maximise a person's rate of survival with a month or two's group training, not to train people into combat specialists.

His heart was visible, and the dismal sack that maketh excrement of what is eaten.

Join Date

Mar 2006

Posts

6,855

Posted On:7/29/2013 7:17pm

--

Originally Posted by Ira Poon

You guys are talking about Fairbairn without mentioning kneeing and seizing of testicles (look in the bear hug section)? -raises an eyebrow-

Seriously though, bear in mind that this is a manual for training soldiers for World War II, where US and Britain had to train a huge number of people who had never been in a fight in their whole lives to have some kind of combat capability in the shortest amount of time as possible. Therefore the ease of learning/training in the methods trumps the effectiveness of the said techniques (not that the latter is not important). If you look carefully there are techniques in the manual that Fairbairn admits "has only one in two chance of success" or even "one in ten chance of success". This is a manual designed to maximise a person's rate of survival with a month or two's group training, not to train people into combat specialists.

That doesn't mean he wasn't full of **** though. If I had to prepare somebody for unarmed combat in a short amount of time, the training damn sure wouldn't include open hand strikes to the arms. There's a lot of wasted time in that book.

I'm not saying Fairbairn was Ashida Kim or anything. It was a different time and he was working with what he had. We just know better now what works and what doesn't.

You guys are talking about Fairbairn without mentioning kneeing and seizing of testicles (look in the bear hug section)? -raises an eyebrow-

We're going through things systematically. We haven't even gotten to the chin jab yet. Patience. If we try to go over everything at once, we'll discuss nothing, and the fact that he taught a testicle grab is independent of his teaching of shuto, for instance.

Seriously though, bear in mind that this is a manual for training soldiers for World War II, where US and Britain had to train a huge number of people who had never been in a fight in their whole lives to have some kind of combat capability in the shortest amount of time as possible. Therefore the ease of learning/training in the methods trumps the effectiveness of the said techniques (not that the latter is not important). If you look carefully there are techniques in the manual that Fairbairn admits "has only one in two chance of success" or even "one in ten chance of success". This is a manual designed to maximise a person's rate of survival with a month or two's group training, not to train people into combat specialists.

Like Devil said, if I were teaching short term self defense (in fact, I am, to my girlfriend right now), the curriculum would be quite a bit different.

The units of the United States Marine Corps who
were stationed in China between 1927 and 1940 learned these methods at my own
hands when I was Assistant Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police.

We have a time frame of 1927 - 1940 ish. Around the time that 'modern' combat was really coming to a head. The introduction of Sub Machine Guns were not considered 'Viable' until around 1940 and before then they were considered 'not viable' (http://world.guns.ru/smg-e.html) I bring this up because we need to understand the mentality of combat at the time. Things were 'considered effective' and not 'tested effective' a great deal. And I believe the same mentality shows strongly in this book.

"Anything goes.." or "Vale Tudo" was first known in around 1920 acording to a vague wiki source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_tudo#History) so we now need to take into consideration that our 'Sport' style (and I use the term sport loosely) is an incredibly young combination of techniques combined from various areas around the world. Prior to then these techniques were taken from art forms who had an advantage over a person who did not have a Martial Art or could defeat an opposing Martial Art.

With our modern day knowledge; the advent of the internet and televised bouts and increasing interest in the sport it should be noted that MMA's success is extremely recent and is the newest comer born by desire and hardened in trial by fire. All techniques were taken from fighting techniques because they work in combat; not in concept.

This is something that could not easily be done in <1940.

TLDR> I think we'll find most of the techniques in the book are either extremely flawed or doesn't work at all versus anyone that is modern combat trained.

As for the knife hand strike. I think I'll put it down to 'popularity of concept' instead of 'tried and tested' in this case. There seems to be a lot of that sort of thing in the book.